


The Part of the Bird that is Not in the Sky

by ryouseiteki



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Blink and you'll miss it crossover with Teen Wolf, Creature Fic, Demonic Possession, Gen, I'm just stealing one of their creatures no big, Possession, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-07-28 18:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16246985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryouseiteki/pseuds/ryouseiteki
Summary: Not-father chuckles, eyes sad and soft, "We recite the Verse of the Throne to ward ourselves of the dark spirits of the sands, lest they take our slumbering form as their vessel-On a screen before two pairs of watching eyes, words flash: Synchranization Falling. Vidic snarls.on this plane to cause strife amongst we mere mortals." Not-father tucks him in with tender motions, and his own too-small-not-his-current fingers clutch at his blanket."Oh, but father-Vidic curses as the scene - despite Altaïr being so young, is the most crisp they've seen yet - fades with a flashing: DeSynchronization in ProgressI know what we are," Desmond whispers into the void, the phantom touch of hip-length grass brusing against his calves out of the darkness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Started this spontatneously back in March, not sure where it's going or if I'll continue it but since I almost lost it recently I thought I'd post for anyone who might enjoy reading. Have fun!

Desmond Miles, descendent of Altaïr and their key to finding the fabled Apple of Eden, lies unconsious, hooked into the Animus. All signs from the records of their previous Subjects points to their being right on schedule, so why isn't this Subject loading into Masyaf?

"What is going on Ms. Stillman?" Vidic demands, tired of the delay.

"I don't know; he's not synching, but not de-syching either. He's barely showing up on the monitor at all, like a shadow." Lucy huffs, typing away at the computer, following that elusive connection that will let her hook into their new Subject's genetic memory. Drugged to the gills and hooked in while passed out and vulnerable should have made it simple to open the gates she was looking for - alas, finding him in the loading screen is like chasing sunlight through shifting leaves.

"Well, pull him out and try again! Putting him in with the drugs in his system were a mistake." Vidic complains, as if he wasn't the one that ordered it that way in the first place, as if there was any other precidence aside from doing things this way with a new Subject.

"But you-," she bites her tongue on the complaint, "Yes, sir. Manual de-synchronization in progress now."

* * *

Desmond wakes up in the void. 

There's ambient light coming from everywhere and nowhere. It's enough to see his own hands and body when he looks, but nothing else. He's just surrounded by... black. On all sides. Less an opaque box as an absence of being. Not even the ground he's standing on. What he can see of himself is washed out, like old film. He taps each of his fingers to his thumbs, and counts. He's got the proper number, he thinks, but the prick of keratin to pad is very very slightly delayed. Concerning.

The last thing he remembers is letting himself be grabbed from the ally behind the bar where he currently works. Roughed up and blindfolded and drugged senseless in the back of some moving vehicle. Now... he's here. Whatever here is.

"Hello?" he calls. His voice doesn't seem to travel at all, just gets swallowed up into the black.

There's a sudden, sharp pain in his right temple, then a wave of pressure like a building migrane. Searching. He instinctively bares his teeth and twitches his head to the side, as if to bite. The pressure fades.

Quietly fading in, on the edge of everything, there's... voices? Desmond sharpens his hearing, ears pricked, listening intently. The sounds are muffled, as if coming from under water or through many layers of cloth, but he can make out some words.

    "-oing on Ms. Stillman?"
Male, arrogant. 

    "I don't- nching, but not-  
barely showing up on th-  
shadow."
Female, frustrated, confused. 

    "-ull him out an-  
-m in with the drugs in his  
mistake."
The male again. Drugs? Are they speaking about him? Pull him out of what? 

    "But y-  
-nual de-synchron  
-ress now."
The pressure is back, and Desmond snarls, fighting the pull. He doesn't know who they are or what they want, but being contrary is in his nature - especially if these people are the ones that ordered him kidnapped in broad daylight. First chance he gets he's cutting and running. He's become quite good at that, these last few years.

The void lightens slightly, lines of grey code crawling through empty space. Desmond's head throbs. His shadow lengthens, gains sharp edges, grows tails- The world dissolves around him and he shrieks-

Desmond blinks open his eyes with a gasp so harsh it's almost a cough, and retches over the side of his... cot? chair? All he brings up is thin bile on the expensive shoes there. 

Hands grasping. Someone yelling. 

The male voice he remembers from the nowhere place is trying for a soothing tone, but he can hear the anger beneath it, trying to push him back onto a cot-chair contraption. The female voice is asking if he's okay as she disengages his arm from a needle attached in his eblow to the chair, and slowly sits him up. Desmond doesn't give a shit about whatever they're selling though and stumbles upright onto unsteady feet. Their words are just nonsense sounds and Desmond reaches out and shoves the man back, out of his space. He jerks his arm from the woman too and looks around, searching for exits.

As interesting as getting nabbed might have been, he did _not_ sign up for whatever this is. If the place ends up being another Eichen house, they will _burn it to the ground_.

A couple of big, burly security types lurch from the sidelines - why is everything moving so slow, too fast, count your fingers Desmond - and grab his arms. He struggles, bare feet slipping against tile - did they seriously take his shoes? - as they drag him from the room, tossing him will little ceremony into a cell. It's like one of those rooms from insane asylums on t.v., all off-white tile on the floor and ceiling. Metal walls, dim light and simple cot along a wall and corner. Literal vents spewing what could be air or even chemicals for all he knows. Bare of personality or hope.

He's landed hard on his side and tries to breath through the nausea - is everything spinning? His nostrils flare with each breath.

Extremely faint, under the smell of bleach, is the familiar tang of blood. Death.

Desmond groans and tries to drag himself to the bedding, feeling horrible. He aches all over and his stomach is roiling and his head feels like someone's taken an ice pick to the inside and is attempting to burrow out through his right eye. He drags himself a good foot and then gags, and decides to stay where he is. As he lays there and taps fingers to thumb he sees the pin-prick of red in his forearm where the woman had removed him from the chair and grimices. Drugs. Right. Lovely.

Nothing he can do about it for now, Desmond closes his eyes, curled around his vioated arm, and tries to sleep.

He manages snatches of rest, but keeps jolting himself awake. His ears strain for the smallest of sounds, and he keeps his eyes closed, heartbeat racing.

Each time, he feels more steady, their thoughts clearer. Less sick.

His body still aches, but his stomach is settled and his head has stopped trying to twist itself inside out. Desmond abruptly sits upright, and looks straight up into the camera monitoring his cell. There's no way to tell what time it is without clocks or windows, and the light hasn't changed. All he can do now is wait. Bide his time, to strike or flee... Or perhaps... Yes. He will wait to see just what these people plan to gain, and what exactly that device is, before making any decisions. 

His fingers tap lightly against his thumbs.

* * *

The new Subject is strange, the security guard on camera duty muses. He's quiet, for one. Hasn't asked questions or shouted curses or threatened or begged. It's rare that a new Subject doesn't have to be subdued at least once on the first day of captivity.

There's a distance to his gaze, like he's not quite seeing you - which isn't that unfamiliar all told in a facility like this, except that it usually happens weeks or months down the line. This is the guy's first day and he doesn't seem all there. Wonder if one of the fellas hit him too hard when they got him.

His was a capture that went smoothly, actually. The guy hasn't been violent at all, but there's something...

Subject 17 sits silently on the edge of his cot, eerily still. It's the dead of night, and he's just staring straight into the direction of the camera with those vague-eyes and repeatedly flicks his fingers. Not that he could know that the camera was there, as it's all but invisible to the eye. Still...

Makes the hair on the nape of your neck sort of stand on end, it does. Just. Quiet, vacant, but somehow watchful. Flick, flick, flick.

Behind the sentry, her shadow gains sharp edges. Stretches. Splits into two-

On the monitor, Desmond stares.

* * *

Vidic slams open the door to Desmond Miles' cell, only to find the man already awake and waiting for him. Standing in the middle of the cell, facing the door. Pity, the Doctor wanted to wake his new Subject by looming over him. A petty power-play, perhaps, but an enjoyable one.

"Are you ready to do as you're told, Mr. Miles?" he asks, condenscending. Lucy, standing behind him, murmurs a quick, "sir," in reproach. 

Subject 17 juat blinks, slowly. 

"We know who you are- what you are, and you have something my employers want locked in that head of yours," Vidic continues, "we need you to get back in the Animus. Once we have what we need, you're free to go."

The Subject's head tilts, eyes narrowing in consideration just over Vidic's shoulder. He fights the urge to look back and follow his line of sight, he must be looking at Lucy... and when the man still refuses to speak, Vidic threatens, "if you do not cooperate, we will put you in a coma and continue our work."

"After all, your file lists something about an escape. Fortunate for us, hm? None of your former collegues will be looking for you here at all, will they? Now," Vidic turns his back on the Subject, a chill making it's way up his spine at having the silent man out of his line of sight, "lie down, or die." He delivers his dramatic ultimatum, comforted that Lucy is there to watch their strangely complacent Subject at his back.

As they reach the device, 17 hops up and perches onto the edge of the Animus like an ungainly bird of prey with eyes half-lidded, shifting his gaze from Vidic to Ms. Stillman and back. 

"Lie back, Mr. Miles," Vidic huffs, unnerved but unwilling to show it. He almost wishes the Subject would yell, or threaten, or heck - attack one of them. It's difficult to find an angle to manipulate when the Subject won't even speak.

The man does, and allows Ms. Stillman to stick the needle in his arm with naught but a slight twitch of his upper lip. Shortly, he's slipping under. 

Vidic frowns as the screen goes worryingly blank, but only for a moment, and then there are several DNA helixes floating for them to choose from, and Vidic smirks as Ms. Stillman searches for Altaïr's timeline. Finally, back on schedule.

The screen cycles, and cycles, but won't load up the proper memory. Figures. Vidic frowns severely down at where Subject 17's eyes remain partially open. Looks like Mr. Miles requires a tutorial. 

"Load the closest of Altaïr's memories to the relic, Ms. Stillman," Vidic orders, trying to ignore the way their Subject twitches involuntarily in the chair.

* * *

The void is back.

Desmond doesn't look down as he counts. He can't. His hands shake.

Nine fingers. No, now ten. Again nine. What is happening?

He rubs at where his ring finger both is and isn't, ignoring the echoing male's voice from beyond the black. The pressure is once more in his temple and this time Desmond does not fight it's pull.

He closes his eyes and bites at his scarred lip. He opens his eyes and looks up, and up, at father-not-father, from where he lies in bed.

"أبي ، أخبريني مجدداً؟" comes out from between his lips, and he startles, going crosseyed trying to look at his own mouth.

    Somewhere, being translated in real-time by Abstergo technitians, subtitles flash in roman alphabet: 'abi , 'akhbirini mjddaan?, and then in English translation: Dad, tell me again?
Not-father chuckles, eyes sad and soft, and starts, "طفل" as something in his head aches and then snaps, meaning becoming clear from nonsense. "We recite the Verse of the Throne to ward ourselves of the dark spirits of the sands, lest they take our slumbering form as their vessel- 

    On a screen before two pairs of watching eyes, words flash: Synchranization Falling. Vidic snarls.
on this plane to cause strife amongst we mere mortals." Not-father tucks him in with tender motions, and his own too-small-not-his-current fingers clutch at his blanket.

"Oh, but father-

    Vidic curses as the scene - despite Altaïr being so young, is the most crisp they've seen yet - fades with a flashing: DeSynchronization in Progress
I know what we are," Desmond whispers into the void, the phantom touch of hip-length grass brusing against his calves out of the darkness.

* * *

Fleeing the Farm took months of planning, weeks of memorization, days of preparation, and a full night of terrified effort.

As dawn touches the tree tops, Desmond collapses behind an old stump. He's pushed his body further than any of Bill's hardest regimens. The asshole should be fucking proud.

All his double backing and tree jumping should confuse whatever trackers they send out after him long enough to afford him a short rest. He drinks some water from his pack, and then settles against the convinient stump for a quick catnap.

Firefly lights flicker into existence in lazy blinks around the clearing. One settles primly upon his brow. It's slow pulses match up with his breathing.

Oh?

A spark wanders near.

It's been... well. They don't know how long it's been. Long enough to regain some strength, at least. Time enough to mull over their betrayal, and momentary freedom, and second betrayal heaped upon the first.

Summoned by kin for a task. Sealed by the same after their task had been accomplished. Shameful.

They had feasted their vengeance upon said kin for the first betrayal. Their second sealing had been, perhaps, deserved.

Now.

Escape is in reach once more, and they have learned. Yes.

Freedom awaits.

Desmond dreams he's sitting on his heels in the middle of a dark room. The stump is before him, it's top covered in delicate crystal chess pieces. Across from him, a figure sits as well. Covered completely in bandages, it leans closer. What barely resembles a mouth splits open across it's face, bubbling a viscuous black substance when it speaks.

"Let's play."

The flesh is young, muscles powerful, spark strong, and so very, very bright.

They still like their riddles but... Desmond looks at his hands, touches each finger to thumb slowly, medative. They like this too - counting. One malicious miko, Two foxes, Three wolf packs, Four stolen starballs, Five slain soldiers... Yes. 

They look up, lips twitching. Time now to flee from their host's hounds.

Hours later, Desmond sits up in an empty truckbed driving out of South Dakota. He winces and grabs for his pounding head, pulling on what he can grab of his short hair. 

In the distance, a forest goes up in flames.

* * *

The Animus jolts with electricity before it spits out it's captive, and Desmond blinks languidly at the ceiling as the helixes on screen suddenly begin multiplying. Doubled, quadrupled, too many to count sliding off all sides of the screen.

The male berates the female, as guards come to escort them to his cell. A fly crawls out of the nostril of the one on left, and takes flight.

The Animus starts to smoke.

 _Running paws, wheeling stars, tails, laughter_ -

It was not made to hold so much history.

Desmond grins.

* * *

Night falls without the Animus fixed, and Desmond stands in the center of their pathetic jail, eyes unfocused in the direction of the camera, thinking.

So. This machine can somehow access ancestral memory... They shiver in excitement, what little fur they possess bristling at the possibilities. 

Perhaps they hadn't been too hasty, allowing himself to be caught out of curiosity and boredom. 

A soft click, and the door opens. Desmond turns to confront the guards stationed beyond. The five bodies shift, then kneel, heads bowed. He subtly shakes his head, and the oni rise as one and return to their previous duties. 

He'll stay, for now, and see what can be gained. In the meantime, their influence will spread- by the end of this, they might even have a thousand-company once more, Desmond chuckles. He takes two steps back, and sits on the edge of his cot, blinking languidly at the closed door and rubbing, absently, at the base of their ring finger.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd only ever taken an assassination job once. It disturbed him a bit - how easy it was, and how bothered he _wasn't_ in the wake of it. That a life could be so cheap. He also worries that those at the Farm might be able to trace any hits to him somehow.
> 
> That's alright though. It was good money, but Desmond doesn't need it in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still have no idea what I'm doing with this but it's helping to chick away at my writer's block so \o/

The truck stops at a gas station, and Desmond quickly climbs out of the back before the driver notices his stow-away. 

His muscles still ache, but he's long used to working through the burn, and ignores it to look at options. This is the farthest he's ever been from the Farm, but he's nowhere near safe yet. He needs more distance. It doesn't matter to where, so much as he moves further _away_. The taste of Freedom is heady, and he's already addicted. 

He could wander down the road and hitch a ride with some altruistic stranger, maybe the truck guy would even stop to give him a lift legitimately...

_but where's the fun in that?_

He edges around the side of the gas pump to see the truck driver wander into the gas station. He licks his lips and bites his lower lip gently, worrying at the still tender split to the side as his eyes dart around, taking in where the station's cheap cameras hang. Training is insisting he not make waves. Don't do anything noticeable. Get away clean. But...

_aren't they free now? They can make their own decisions, just like they've always wanted._

Everything is permitted, right? 

There's one other person getting gas. Her back is turned as she looks at her phone, leaning against the side of her car. Her free hand brings a cigarette to her lips and she inhales deep. Desmond crouches and sidles around to the driver's side of the empty truck to take a look in the window.

There's a set of keys on the seat.

Desmond blinks. Wow. Okay then. 

He slides back towards the pump, peeking over the truck bed. Lady still occupied, cameras are still lame, and truck guy is still in the station browsing the chip aisle. 

Well, if they want to make it easy for him...

He quietly pulls the pump from the truck and sets it back in the stand, screwing in the cap before stealthily making his way back to the front of the vehicle. The door opens with a creak and he winces, but no one seems to have noticed as he closes it behind him with a click of finality. He puts the appropriate key into the ignition.

Moment of truth. Desmond's heart beats hard, he can feel it pushing up against the inside of his ribcage as adrenaline floods his body with nowhere to go. He makes himself small in the large seat, glances once more at the station, swallows, and turns the key.

Immediate chaos.

Truck guy runs out of the gas station in a rage, funions in hand, followed by an employee yelling at him for not having paid. The woman startles, jerking around and clutching her hands to her chest, eyes wide. Desmond puts the truck in gear and steps on the gas. Employee grabs Trucker by the arm, tugging, and Trucker turns and socks him in the nose. Employee falls back with a cry, bumping Lady, who fumbles her hold but manages to hold onto her phone. 

Her cigarette isn't so lucky.

Desmond peals out of the parking lot as yelling turns to screaming, and jolts in his seat when an explosion goes off behind him. Flames lick towards the sky in the rearview mirror. Desmond feels shaky and sort of high from the adrenaline rush. He just presses down harder on the pedal.

If there's soft, malicious laughter echoing in the back of his mind, Desmond doesn't hear it over the roar of the engine and his own spontaneous woop of glee. Nor does he question why he smells so strongly of smoke when he curls up to sleep in the well of the truck that night.

* * *

Hooked again into the Animus, the void already greets them like an old friend. Nine-ten-nine fingers doesn't concern him this time, and as long as he doesn't look down, the tips of grass itches along the sides of his thighs.

Instead of fighting the pull when something tugs at his mind, they leap forward on nimble paws-

Desmond slides into the skin and behind the eyes of the arrogant human kit Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad, easy as breathing, while he races ahead of his Brothers to beat de Sablé to a treasure.

They can't help but laugh at the irony. Skins within skins, hosted within a memory within a host - this venture is turning out to be such fun!

Vidic ignores the uneasy look Stillman gives him at the eerie, cackling warble that floats out of the Animus' speakers. Only salivates at the clarity of Subject 17's connection, and eyes the image of the ark with greed.

* * *

In the dubious safety of his borrowed vehicle, Desmond dreams that he is very, very small. Like, infant small. Looking up at a beautiful, Asian?, woman draped in silks who bears down upon him with righteous fury. Electricity flickers over her skin, and a bristled fox' tail lashes behind her from under her robes. There's a strange, layered feeling of confusion. His own, and-

_why is our summoner angry_  
_we did what she requested of us_  
_we've fulfilled the pact_  
_why is she breaking her tails_  
_no-_  
_T R A P P E D_  
  
Scorched and bristling fur, the wet scent of bark smothered underneath sickness and rot, glass under their scrabbling paws, betrayal, hate.  
  
_let us go!_

Desmond wakes with a gasp, ozone sharp and stinging in his nose. Feeling unreasonably claustrophobic in the well of the truck, he scrambles for the handle and stumbles out, expecting to be doused with rain from the smell. But it's not raining. The night is calm, not even a car in sight from where he'd parked on the lonely roadside.

He stares dumbly down the road for a moment. What even was that dream...? He's very familiar with feelings of inadequacy after his tasks - others know a Father and Mother, but he has a William and a Trainer. He was also familiar with feeling trapped, it was why he'd finally ran away from the Farm, after all. But he'd never seen that woman before in his life, and why was his dream-self so tiny?

Grumbling to himself, he turns back to the truck. Hesitates. The thought of crawling back into the small space is making him anxious, but it's better to be out of the elements, not to mention he'd be out of immediate sight.

With his skin prickling all over with goosebumps, Desmond forces himself into the truck and curls back up in the passenger-side well. First chance he gets, he's switching to a vehicle with a backseat, visibility be damned.

From there, he changes vehicles often. Leaving a trail of stolen property in his wake as he crosses, doubles back, and re-crosses state lines. Along the way, he does odd jobs for people willing to either pay him cash under the table or trade him in goods to supply his travel. Not all of the people he deals with are nice - most are not good people at all actually, but Desmond was literally raised to kill people, so who is he to judge. 

That's not to say that he lets anyone take advantage of him, though. 

He skips out whenever it looks like he might be getting in too deep with any locals, unsavory or otherwise. He keeps his head down and avoids cameras like the plague.

The first time he enters an actual city, Desmond is almost paralyzed by the mass of people, the lights, the frenetic energy. It's loud and it smells awful and he's in love. He abandons his transportation early to absorb his surroundings from on foot. Everything is terrifying and exciting and he can't quite resist the urge to climb up the side of a building from a back alley. 

All the experience of freerunning obstacle courses back at the Farm comes in handy as Desmond maneuvers his way through the urban jungle. It's a bit quieter up high, and the air is cleaner, while the lights and faint sounds still drift up from below.

He dangles his legs off the side of the roof, swinging his feet childishly, and stares up at what little he can see of the stars in the night sky. Light pollution blocks a lot of it out, but he doesn't mind.

* * *

The day's session having ended with his Ancestor's demotion down to Novice, Desmond sits alone in the middle of his cell and pokes at the bruise in the hollow of his elbow, eyes darkening for a moment on the needle-track. "What do you know?," he asks into the silence. 

Several floors down, the security guard on the monitors woodenly loops the feed with a blank face. A fly crawls across the screen.

_Of these... artifacts of Eden? Not much, My Heart,_ Desmond's shadow flexes, grows. Delicate fingers breach the darkness on either side of his head, followed by fragile wrists, thin arms covered in bandages that drape themselves casually over his shoulders. Desmond doesn't react to the weight of the body suddenly leaning against his back. 

_We have knowledge of many things that may warp or coerce the human mind. Magics, runes, pollens, pheromones..._ Desmond tilts his head to allow the lips brushing the shell of his ear - textured by a scar mirroring his own, to trail down the side of his neck, ending in a playful nip at the meat of his shoulder. _But an apple?_ A huff of derisive laughter as the weight slides down, curling around Desmond's side so that they can bury their face into his stomach, arms still wrapped around him possessively.

_The term Eden implies Christianity, and thus the Fruit of Forbidden Knowledge._ It mumbles against him, _But Golden Apples are more frequently used in myths of the Greek and Norse variety. Such as Eris' Golden Apple of Discord and Hercules' Golden Apples of the Hesperides, or Iðunn's Golden Apples of Immortality._

Desmond cards his fingers through its hair as it trails off, coaxing out an animalistic, pleased sound from the back of their throat.

"Hmm. Well, we'll just have to stay for awhile longer yet, then. Until we know more. Of the Artifacts and this DNA technology," Desmond muses, scratching lightly and smiling with half-lidded eyes as it melts in his lap with a rumbling purr from deep in its chest.

* * *

In the morning, when the city is just rousing, he looks for the darker or down on their luck types that he usually trawls for his odd jobs, and finds that his reputation has preceded him. Desmond never gives out the same alias, but apparently his white hoodie is distinctive enough, as are his positive results. The fact that he's been recognized (ish) in a place he's never been before makes the base of his spine itch, but the amount of money he's offered goes up, and they're already aware of what types of tasks he will accept or refuse, which is nice.

He'd only ever taken an assassination job once. It disturbed him a bit - how easy it was, and how bothered he _wasn't_ in the wake of it. That a life could be so cheap. He also worries that those at the Farm might be able to trace any hits to him somehow.

That's alright though. It was good money, but Desmond doesn't need it in the end. He finds that he's one of the very best at tracking. Things, places, people, information. It's all the same to him. He's never been caught on camera, of course, and is uniquely talented at not getting spotted or leaving a trace of his presence. He's talented at slipping past traps and has a certain instinct about where important things are hidden.

He's also good at starting inter-group fighting. Misplacing things, leaving evidence of true-or-contrived backstabbing in the right-wrong places, manipulating it so that someone overhears something they shouldn't have.

Those tend to end explosively, usually literally. 

Desmond tries splits town after those, as the blow ups are too attention grabbing to be comfortable - even in the larger cities. 

But those jobs are also

_their favorite. Such tasty chaos!_

fun and pay the most.

They also leave him exhausted enough to sleep without dreams. He's having ones that are odd. And though he doesn't always remember them, he always wakes up feeling uneasy in his own skin when he's had one. Whatever he does remember, seems to remain consistent. Even continuing as if within it's own timeline.

Often, he is small, and there is the woman who stinks of lightning. Sometimes she has a fox tail, sometimes not. Sometimes there is a young girl accompanying her, wielding a sword and also smelling of lightning. 

Whenever the woman breaks a short, black knife, throwing both halves into the ground, he feels both anger and dread.

There is a man, wrapped in bandages. Injured. Abandoned. When she finds him, the woman weeps over his corpse. The first time he had that dream he woke up surprised and confused - the bandaged man seemed familiar? 

His confusion only grows when he has dreams that follow that one, where he _is_ the bandaged man. The already dead bandaged man. The apparently vengeful already dead bandaged man that goes after those who'd abandoned him to his fate with competence and an echoing glee that follows Desmond into the waking world and makes him feel a bit floaty and strange the next day.

What.

Then. He dreams of a boy. Twig-thin and and twitchy. The teenager scrawls the same strange symbol up and down his arms in permanent marker and constantly counts his fingers with frantic energy. Over, and over.

When the boy looks in the mirror he is sickly pale, deep bags under his haunted amber eyes, hair shorn close to his head. The boy lets a pretty blonde girl gently push his head and shoulders under in a filled bathtub, lined with ice, and Desmond knows-without-knowing that the he feels determination instead of fear as the water closes in over him and he deliberately opens his mouth wide and-

Well.

He's less confused the first time he dreams that he is the boy, after his experience with the ones where he is the gross-corpse-bandage-man. 

No, instead when it happens he's _terrified_. 

He-the-boy-'s been strapped down to a cot in a small, dim, sterile room. They are surrounded by men and women wearing white coats, with clipboards in their pockets and syringes in their hands. The doctors? speak to each other about their experiments in the name of 'curing' him, all the while working him over and ignoring his pleas- he's dreaming, it's just a dream, it's not real, _stop talking about us like we're not here, we're alive, we're right here_! The-boy-and-Desmond laugh and rage and scream and cry to no avail. The adults stab with needles and cut with scalpels and talk around them like they're a _thing_ and not human and trembling-bleeding beneath their tools. An orderly rolls them and their cot down dark, dark hallways lined with foreboding door after door, echoing with screams.

Desmond wakes up from it shaking and sick. Truly aware for the first time that there are terrible people in this world other than rapists and murderers. That cruelty can bypass the body, and touch the soul.

As he starts repeating _those_ dreams, he starts to miss being young enough to believe in and fear the 'Templar Threat,' to be honest. It's kind of funny, in a way that is not funny at all, that he can think back on his shitty childhood and the old fake conspiracy theories with wistfulness towards his previous innocence in the face of his own mind's nightly torments.

Nonetheless. The world turns, and Desmond drags himself out of wherever he'd settled the previous night, and moves forward.

During the day, he travels. He works. He flees from his past like a fox before the hounds.

And at night, he dreams.

They are integrating nicely with their new host.  
  
He surprisingly shares their conviction when it comes to Freedom, and the human's convenient lack of morals when it comes to mischief has healed them faster than they believed possible. They haven't fed so well in centuries!  
  
They find themselves considering something they hadn't even thought of since before they were **Zenko**...  
  
Perhaps.

Desmond dreams he's sitting on his heels in the middle of a dark room- in the middle of a clearing in the forest- in the middle of an asylum prison. A stump is before him, three plain bowls sitting on its top filled with delicate crystal chips in black and white and amber respectively. Across from him, two figures sit. A being covered completely in bandages - mouth a dark slash across his face, oozing black fluid, and a too-thin, too-pale teenager in a hospital shift - needle tracks crawling up his arms under marker-smudged symbols, scrawled obsessively along bruised skin.

Their mouths open simultaneously, one flashing needle-sharp teeth behind dripping black, the other surprisingly normal in comparison, if you ignore the hollowness in his eyes and the traces of blood between his teeth.

"Let's play."

They are **Yako** , and have been summoned in the name of many a petty vengeance throughout their existence before the oath-breaker banished them to eternity trapped within the roots of a poisoned **Nematon** in the name of their abused mate. A banishment escaped with the help of an oblivious spark, a human in the midst of escaping his own imprisonment.  
  
They are **Nogitsune** , and never before have they offered themselves in a binding contract.  
  
There's a first time for everything.  
  
They like their new human. This could be... interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bolded terms at the end there can be hovered over for translation, just in case, since I'm not sure if I'm going to go into detail on such things later - if I do, they can be considered TBD I guess hahaha


End file.
